1. Field of the Invention:
The present invention relates to a terminal for an IC card used in various kinds of industrial fields such as banking, the medical industry, and the transportation industry.
2. Description of the Prior Art:
A conventional example of this kind of terminal for an IC card is shown in FIG. 7. According to this example, the terminal for an IC card has a system structure including a number of programs all stored in a ROM mounted in a terminal body. One program, related to a basic system area 20, includes a monitor portion 200, a BIOS portion 201, and a BDOS portion 202. Another program, related to an application system area 30, includes a library portion 300 and a program portion 301 for controlling various kinds of communications and defining the protocol of asynchronous half-duplex/full-duplex, basic/HDLC (High-level Data Link Control)/ANSER (Automatic answer Network System for Electrical Request), etc. Also included is an application program related to an application program area 40.
According to the conventional system structure, in most cases, programs are not assorted by hierarchies or categories thereof to be stored in the ROM. Moreover, most of the ROMs are mask ROMs and OTP ROMs (One time programmable ROM). Because of this, once a ROM which stores a program is produced, it is almost impossible to change the program.
Furthermore, when a ROM is mounted in the terminal body, it is required to disassemble the terminal to exchange the ROM, thereby changing the program. Since it is difficult for a user to disassemble the terminal, the terminal to be disassembled should be passed through a production line again. Especially, in the case of an IC card (based on ISO), there are communication protocols (protocol type: international standards of T=0 (character transmission system) and T=1 (block transmission system); and a regulation in each country of T=14 (local transmission system)) of various kinds of systems between the IC card and the terminal (IFD: Interface Device). Because of this, it is difficult to cope with various kinds of IC cards which are generally used by mounting the ROM storing communication programs for IC cards including the above-mentioned protocols in the terminal for an IC card, and the applicability of the terminal becomes substantially inferior.
As described above, according to the conventional terminal for an IC card, operations for a number of purposes and/or of various kinds have been difficult to be coped with. Moreover, there has been a disadvantage in that the terminal is less versatile in its applicability.